An American (or 20) in Paris

LT 9 July Paris

Saturday morning we got up early (-ish) and got organised to head to Paris.  Peter was keen not to return to Paris with a suitcase behind his seat and his knees up around his ears like Mr Bean, so he spent a while packing the car just so… managed to get everything in the boot this time. (But no chance at all we could have fitted the last big suitcase as well!)

Paris is about 2 ½ hours away and quite a reasonable drive, though expensive – about 25 Euros ($40-odd) each way in tolls!  The traffic issues start at about the ring road and beyond that the traffic is just unbelievable.  Roundabouts have multiple lanes with cars criss-crossing everywhere.  There are often lights to get onto the roundabout, give ways marked on the roundabout (at each new entrance, i.e. you give way to traffic coming on), and/or pedestrian crossings immediately as you exit the roundabout.  Basically it’s a total free-for-all and you somehow come out the other side, and sometimes even on the right road.  The junctions between the various highways and ring roads and main roads are like Auckland’s spaghetti junction x 1000, and several times we took the wrong piece of spaghetti.  Oh well, more of Paris.

We travelled straight to our accommodation for the weekend, which was another home booked through Airbnb.  The family were still at home, getting organised themselves to head away to the south of France for their holidays.  The house is a funny little rabbit warren of rooms and corridors, some with makeshift roofs, some very strange looking electrical wiring and a somewhat disorganised family (the flat was described as a ‘work in progress’ but I think some of the anti-features are more to do with the family themselves…. Hippy is maybe a term that could be used here?, I think they may have used the word Bohemian).  In Paris terms it’s quite a large apartment, but so cramped and ‘efficient’ compared to what we have at home.  There is a small concrete patio out the back and no garden or lawn at all.  There are also two cats here (which haven’t been particularly interested in us, much to my disappointment) which we are responsible for feeding.

When we arrived we were offered a lunch of organic bread, a cheese platter and some red wine.  OK that will be great thanks!  We then just rested and relaxed for an hour or two while the family did their last preparations and headed out.  The weather was quite miserable and it rained quite heavily on and off for the rest of the day.  It was too late to go into the main part of Paris by this time, so we walked down to the local shopping centre to get a few groceries and check out the trains etc so we were all ready for the next day.  The train station is about 10 minutes’ walk away, then it’s about 15 minutes into the centre of Paris.

That night we did a bit of research about the Eiffel Tower, to see if you could pre-book tickets or any such thing.  Normally you can (though not the night before), but right now there are only one or two of the lifts working, out of four, so the queues are much longer than normal.  Actually going up the Eiffel Tower hadn’t been on my list of “must-do’s” – luckily! Here are some amazing things we learned though: The Eiffel Tower has about 7 million visitors a year (my maths tells me that’s about 20,000 a day), is 324m high, and it takes 60 tonnes of paint to repaint it every 7 years.  Now you’re ready for your next quiz night! 

That night there was the most terrific thunder storm – the skylights in the bedroom and the clearlite corridor roofing meant that the rooms lit up like a spotlight – so between that and Caelan’s itchy bites and our bed that was so hard it was like sleeping on the floor, it wasn’t the best night’s sleep for anyone.  We didn’t race to get up on Sunday and headed into Paris proper late in the morning. 

We had decided to spend the day ticking off a few of the main Paris sights - the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower (bottom of) and Notre Dame.  We started at the Arc de Triomphe, which was actually very very cool.  It wasn’t that expensive to climb up (about 15 euros for us all, kids under 18 are free) and the views from the top are really impressive.  The arch is in the middle of a big roundabout that has 12 roads leading onto it.  One of the roads comes down the Champs Elysees and you can look straight down towards the Louvre. Directly back the other way is the archway at La Defense. It’s very central, you can see for miles and the great thing is that you still have the Eiffel Tower on the skyline!  Win all round.  There weren’t many French voices at the top though, just mainly Americans, so that was a bit of a downer J

Next stop was the Eiffel Tower. This is just a massive structure, way bigger in real life than you imagine.  The legs on it are about 80m apart – the scale is ridiculous.  There were swarms of people everywhere, as you might expect, and very longs queues for the lifts.  We did walk across the bridge to the big palace-y thing on the other side (forgive my geography) to take some photos, but it was a bit difficult to get a good shot as there were those temporary fence barriers all around that were in the process of being removed, and in fact we couldn’t even go down the far side down the Champs de Mars for all the fencing etc.  There must have been a big event on a few days before – as well as the fencing there was lots of rubbish everywhere.  It was quite cool to see the Eiffel Tower in real life, but the visit to the Arc de Triomphe was probably better.

Notre Dame was next and last on the list for Sunday.  There was quite a queue there too but it was moving basically at walking speed so we joined the line and headed in (no entry fee, bonus!).  We didn’t realise until we got inside that there was actually a church service taking place. There were signs up to be silent, and the main seating area was roped off, but you could do a full circuit of the church around the seating area.  It must be so distracting for the people in there to have hundreds and thousands of tourists snapping pictures and trying and failing to be silent.  Add to that the clanging of the machine selling the little souvenir coins that was doing a roaring trade!  We completed our circuit just about when the church service finished, so we then made a painfully slow exit.  It was an amazing building, inside and out – the architecture and all the stained glass windows everywhere were so beautiful, a real treat to visit.  The organ sounded great too!

Before we visited Notre Dame we had found a nice little street selling all kinds of food, so having had chips and waffles for afternoon tea we returned there after the visit to grab some tea before heading home.

Public toilets in Paris are a bit of an adventure… if you can find one at all.  They are few and far between, when you find them there is usually only one, and its condition ranges on a scale from very unpleasant to entirely vile.  Often you have to pay, but the money definitely doesn’t go towards cleaners.  Even in the railway and metro stations, you will be lucky to find a single toilet!  Perhaps consequently, some of the metro halls and stairwells have a smell that makes you walk nice and quick. Sometimes (as I discovered) there is a knack to getting out of the loo and you can get stuck in there.  

We have been managing the trains and metro quite well. It is all well signposted and logical – sometimes you need to be quick with your decisions though if there is a train on the platform as you arrive.  We noticed heaps and heaps of people dodging the ticket machines – jumping over them, walking through close behind someone else (we had this happen to us a few times) – different techniques for the different gates.  We didn’t see any security anywhere keeping a watch on it, and at some stations and times it was happening as much as 1 in 5 people!  Makes you feel a bit over-honest for actually buying a ticket!

On Monday morning we had to return the rental car we had collected last week, in preparation for getting our Peugeot back tomorrow.  Although the depot was only 10km from our accommodation, it still took over half an hour to drive there – crazy traffic here!  We dropped the car off, then, once reunited with our suitcase, we returned to our accommodation by train to drop it off (seemed more practical than dragging it around Paris for the day).  This took up most of the morning so we planned to have a quick lunch at home then head back into town.  We had intended to pick up some bread for lunch at the bakery that had been open all day on Sunday, at least until 7pm when we had walked past it on the way home… but in a cruel twist of French logic it was closed on Monday at lunchtime!

After a lunch of whatever we could pull together at home, we headed into the centre of Paris to walk by the Louvre and around the Tuileries Gardens.  Now this was the Paris of romance novels and chick flicks! All around were these beautiful picturesque buildings, you walked into the square with the pyramid and there were big fountains, then further down the way beautiful gardens and huge trees and flower beds and fountains and ponds and deck chairs.  All very lovely to look at, and the weather was entirely pleasant.  There was one area where there were lots of people selling all kinds of junk souvenirs, but they must not have been permitted down in the gardens, so it was quite peaceful.  There were some pretty odd and arty sculptures though!  We couldn’t quite get all the way down to the Place de la Concorde with the obelisk (because of more of those fence things) but we went as far as we could.  Wandering back down the side of the gardens there was a big summer carnival going on, and there was also a lovely little (free) children’s playground.  What summer bliss, watching my daughter frolic in the sun at a playground in the centre of Paris!

It was a lovely relaxing way to spend the day – and especially nice to discover the ‘attraction’ of Paris, as distinct from the ‘attractions’ of Paris from the day before.